Alzheimer's Facts

A call to action

Alzheimer's Disease International recommends in its World Alzheimer's Report 2010 that:

"governments and other research funders...increase dementia funding to a level more proportionate to the economic burden of the condition."

This would require "a 15-fold increase ... to reach parity with research into heart disease and a 30-fold increase to achieve parity with cancer research."

Global costs

The estimated worldwide costs of dementia are US $604 billion. This represents 1% of global GDP.

If dementia costs were a company, it would be the world's largest by annual revenue, ahead of Wal-Mart ($414 billion).

If dementia costs were a country, it would be the world's 18th largest economy, ranking behind Turkey and ahead of Indonesia.

On the rise

There are 35.6 million people living with dementia worldwide. Those numbers are expected to double by 2030 and triple by 2050.

From 2000-06 death rates in the U.S. have declined for most major diseases - heart disease (-11.1%), breast cancer (-2.6%), prostate cancer (-8.7%), stroke (-18.2%) and HIV/AIDS (-16.3%) while Alzheimer's disease deaths rose 46.1%.